The Wardman Wire

The Independent on Sunday has an interview with the Editor of Tribune. I have a few comments.

Independent on Sunday, Today, page 87.

In its heyday, after the Labour election landslide of 1945, Tribune boasted a circulation of 40,000. A typical week might have seen Michael Foot denouncing Ernest Bevin’s pro-US foreign policy, or Barbara Castle arguing for decolonisation. Major political decisions within the Labour party would be thrashed out in its pages and the magazine became a training ground for left-leaning politicians and journalists. But since the Sixties the readership has dwindled to a mere 3,000, although the website, relaunched last year, draws a further 2,500 unique users per week.

So what happened? “The Left has always been bad at promoting itself through journalism – they just don’t put the investment in,” says Seddon. “This is a great lost opportunity for the unions. If they really want to get people thinking about the issues they’ve been discussing at conference, they need something like Tribune. What could be better? But it means putting some serious money into it.”

If the unions decide to adopt his strategy, they will have to continue stumping up the cash, although, relative to their revenues, the cost of keeping Tribune going is small. Producing 49 issues per year costs £270,000, or £22,000 per month. Advertising revenue used to account for about £7,500 per month, but that has fallen sharply since May, when Boris Johnson replaced Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London. Under Livingstone, the Greater London Authority and the Mayor’s office ran weekly ads in Tribune, and the loss of these two advertisers has left Tribune extraordinarily thin on ads: an August edition was entirely ad-free.

Reflections

Tribune Magazine and the Unions: Problematic

Organs of the Left always looking for support from Trade Unions is problematic (to put it mildly). Trade Unions don’t belong to the Left; they belong to their members.

And they are always going on about “representing all our members” and being “member led”. That is not usually the case - particularly in the area of political representation.

There’s a logical chasm between claiming to represent ALL the members, and a political affiliation to a single party. You can’t have it both ways - sorry. I recall a survey by UNITE (largest Trade Union, 2.0 million members+) that demonstrated only a minority (49%) of its members voting Labour; it was a brief item on the Radio 4 Today programme, and I need to go looking for an original copy - but the number is about right. In that case that is more than half of the members who are not represented by the Political Levy.

If the proposal is to use Union money to shore up a magazine which is a minority interest even on the left, then I fail to see how that fits in with all the “we are there to represent our members” trumpetting.

Tribune Online: A CHALLENGE

Do they know just how HARD it is to make money on the web without a reasonably big user base? For my money, “reasonably big” in this context means around 200,000-250,000 unique users a month as counted by the ABCe process - which is about the same as 100,000-125,000 as measured by hosted services used by most bloggers. That is an audience of roughly Guido size.

The alternative is to have a high-value niche audience and a very carefully designed strategy - as used by (for example) journalism.co.uk. Take a look at their advertising pages and media pack (and particularly the diversity of their income streams) for an example.

The second strategy will only work with an attractive and trusted brand within a niche, which may be the strongest card Tribune has going for it.

At present Tribune are running adverts from Messagespace and Tradedoubler. Messagespace is fine and an obvious network to use, but hardly lucrative on 500 unique users a day. On Tradedoubler I just note that big networks are dependent on having a lot of traffic. With those networks on the traffic stated in the article (and kudos to the Indy for using a sensible measure) I’d be considering myself fortunate to clear £10 a week (they probably need a figure closer to £1000 per week). One caveat on this comment: Tribune’s traffic may well be of a different profile, which will have some effect.

The website can make a decent contribution, but I’d estimate it will take 2-3 years, perhaps a dozen different income streams, and hundreds of experiments to find something close to the optimal mix. Currently on the Wardman Wire there about 6-8 different income streams that I am experimenting with; the site is making progress but I don’t expect any major fireworks on income for about another 12 months.

And there’s still the need to boost the Tribune traffic by something like 20x; 20x is a 10% month on month increase for 32 consecutive months, and UK hardcore political traffic has at least 4 months that are essentially flat each year (April, August, September, December - and possibly July as well). Not an easy thing to achieve quickly.

Tribune (thank God) does not have the “Primrose Hill” option of the newspapers - even the “qualities” - of loading their websites with this sort of linkbait (”diluted bullshit”):

“here’s a sexy/ugly actress/model/Janet Street-Porter in her smalls discovering how high viscosity chocolate absorb-o-metric Kabbalah paste of Tibetan angelica-extract harvested on the Solstice and rolled on the naked thighs of Spanish Yaks-on-heat applied to your left nipple on a Thursday afternoon with our special offer £50 lollipop-stick can transform your sex-drive in your 40s-70s“

so it will be fascinating to follow what they do. An interesting challenge.

I’d be tempted to start off with a “Champagne Socialist” champagne club to rival the Spectator Wine Club, though; it would get the Blairites on board, since “real socialism” is the cry of the hour (but is a bit too “Living Marxism” to be stomached). And what about “Milliband-brand” sponsored bananas? It may get Kate Garraway on board, and save Tribune from rebuttals.

Wrapping Up

I hope that it works for Tribune, as we need high quality political debate everywhere, and I have a question about the blog here:

I’m working on the development of this site, and I’m considering doing a long-term (i.e., 12 months at least) Advertising Case study which would involve publishing the strategy, traffic and income from each source month as I try different things and the site (hopefully) grows.

Would that be worthwhile?